This invention, described by this application and its parent patents, is generally in the field of initiating, disabling, enabling or restoring certain operations in a cellphone in response to where the cellphone is geographically located.
In discussing the specific art in this disclosure, parent patents' prior art term “control signal” has been replaced with this disclosure's “courtesy signal” to designate communications using ultrasonic or low-power rf (radio frequency) signals, the prior art's term “area” or “restricted area” has been replaced with this disclosure's “zone” to designate a geographic region in which cellphone operations are initiated, enabled, disabled or restored. Further, the system comprising a courtesy signal transmitter and a cellphone incorporating a courtesy signal receiver is a “courteous cellphone system”, and a cellphone that has the capabilities described herein is “courteous cellphone compliant”.
These patents addressed the problem of disabling communication between cellphones and a cellphone tower, such as should have been done at the 9-11 catastrophe at the world trade center. During that catastrophe, at “ground zero”, non-first-responders saturated the cellphone network, so the first responders' cellphones becoming useless for emergency communications. Transmissions between the non-first-responders cellphones and cellphone towers should have been completely disabled right at non-first-responder's cellphone in order to allow first responders full use of their cellphones and the cellphone network. Courteously, however, when such transmissions are about to be disabled, the cellphone might be programmed to allow the non-first-responders cellphone user one completed telephone call to tell a friend or family member that he or she is ok, limiting the call's duration to, say 15 seconds, as well as a limited number of short calls to 911.
This application's parent applications and patents further addressed the problem of initiating, enabling, disabling or restoring of various components in a cellphone. Received courtesy signal bits comprise initiating, enabling, disabling or restoring bits. An example of initiating an operation is that when such a received initiating courtesy signal bit is ‘1’, in order to detect hidden cellphones, a cellphone responds by initiating the cellphone sending of an rf signal that can be detected by law enforcement officers. An example of enabling an operation is that when such a received enabling courtesy signal bit is ‘1’ the cellphone ringer is enabled so that when a new call comes in, the cellphone ringer rings. An example of disabling an operation is that when such a received disabling courtesy signal bit is ‘1’, the cellphone ringer is disabled, so that when a new call comes in, the ringer does not ring. An example of restoring an operation is that, when such a received restoring courtesy signal bit is ‘1’, the state of enabling or disabling, just before the previous enabling or disabling of the aforementioned operation, is restored. This application's parent applications and patents considered enabling or disabling cellphone components. This application's aforementioned operations consider initiating, enabling, disabling or restoring cellphone software operations, as well as enabling or disabling cellphone components.
Parent applications addressed the problem of disabling cellphone operations, especially texting, near a vehicle's driver when the vehicle is in motion. Parent patents also addressed the problem of overriding the disabling discussed above, to service incoming emergency calls.
These patents disclosed techniques to initiate, enable, disable or restore these operations using an ultrasonic signal or a low-power radio frequency (rf) signal. This application specifically discloses a way to use such a signal to initiate, disable, enable, or restore these operations if the cellphone comprises a global positioning satellite system (GPSS) that can be used to determine if the cellphone is in a predefined zone in which some operations are initiated, enabled, disabled or restored. Ultrasonic or low-power radio courtesy signal transmitters may be positioned by doorways at entrances to or exits from a zone, or at places near the zone, this positioning near the zone to be discussed later, to initiate, disable, enable or restore cellphone components.
Using (the signal amplitude of) a low-power rf signal, to determine if a cellphone is in a zone, could have transmission characteristics similar to 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi communications between desktop or laptop computers and internet modems in the home. In such systems, a computer located anywhere in a typical house can communicate with an internet modem located anywhere in that house, and often it can reach several neighbors' internet modems or computers as well. Analogously, a courtesy signal, sent from a courtesy signal transmitter located anywhere in the house, could enable or disable cellphone operations anywhere in the house, but would occasionally enable or disable such operations in neighboring houses too.
The main problem, in using (the signal amplitude of) an rf signal to determine if a cellphone is in a zone, is that the range of adequate strength of this signal will fade out or fade in at different places at different times, depending on the weather, signal interference, or the placement of people and objects in and near the zone. If (the signal amplitude of) an rf signal alone determines if a cellphone is in a zone, analogous to Wi-Fi, the zone might extend from time to time to neighboring houses, or fail to cover the intended house. This might result in acrimonious neighborhood complaints, altercation, or litigation. Disabling cellphone operations using (the signal amplitude of) an rf signal alone in fairly precise locations, such as in an auditorium, but not disabling these operations in nearby precise places such as the auditorium's lobby, would be difficult if not impossible.
However, if the cellphone has a processor coupled to a Global Positioning Satellite System (GPSS) receiver, the cellphone could determine its current geographical location within a few meters, and using an inventive GPSS technique discussed later, could improve accuracy of the cellphone's current geographical location to within a few decimeters. The cellphone's processor can then determine if the cellphone is in a zone, and if so, initiate, enable, disable or restore operations in the cellphone.
To further clarify this invention's background, now consider using a GPSS in the cellphone to determine if the cellphone is in a zone without using the courtesy signal system described in this application and its parent applications and patents. The zone's data could be stored in a separate module, such as a server, or else inside the cellphone.
If the zone information is stored only in some module outside the cellphone, then the cellphone has to transmit the cellphone's GPSS coordinates from itself towards the module where the zone information is stored. The coordinates could be transmitted out of the cellphone using the aforementioned cellphone to cellphone tower transmission, or some other similar transmitter. If the cellphone to cellphone tower transmission is disabled, the aforementioned other transmitter should be disabled too, for exactly the reasons were given earlier for disabling the cellphone to cellphone tower transmission. In the aforementioned catastrophic 9-11 situation, after ordinary user's cellphone transmission and/or the aforementioned other transmitters are disabled so only first responders can use their cellphones, the cellphone emerges from a zone in which transmission was prohibited to where it is permitted. To decide to enable the cellphone to cellphone tower transmitter, the cellphone needs to transmit the cellphone's GPSS coordinates to the aforementioned module to determine if the transmission is enabled, using the cellphone to cellphone tower or the aforementioned other transmitter. But at this time these cellphone to module transmissions, as well as the aforementioned other transmission if it is used, are disabled, so the aforementioned cellphone cannot transmit the required data to determine if the aforementioned transmissions will be enabled. This operation is impossible.
If the zone data is stored in a memory in the cellphone, the total size of this data is proportional to the number of zones. If the memory is 1-level (without some kind of a cache) this size can be large, eventually requiring current cellphones to be thrown away in favor of new cellphones having sufficient storage capacity for this data. Later expansion of the number of zones could result in needing to throw away these new cellphones in favor of newer cellphones having sufficient storage capacity for this even larger amount of data, and so on. Further, zone information can change with time. For instance in the aforementioned auditorium zone, preventing ringing during a performance, the zone should be created before the beginning of a performance, deactivated at the beginning of intermission, reactivated again at the end of the intermission, and destroyed at the end of the performance. The data needs to be current, or ringing may be improperly permitted, say, during the start of the second half of the performance, rather than just during the intermission.
Although storing zone data in a cellphone 1-level memory does not appear to be attractive, if the aforementioned data is brought into this aforementioned memory utilizing some kind of cache, and only the minimum useful data is sent into the cache, then storing zone data in the cellphone memory may be useful. Such a solution further needs a development of cache maintenance strategies and strategies to maintain consistency of multiple copies of the same data that are cached in multiple processors. This kind of system is not further developed because a courteous cellphone system, discussed shortly, appears to be significantly better than this kind of system that stores zone data in the cellphone memory.